


The Commiseration Operation

by haraya



Series: Just a Moment in the Light [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Post-Horizon (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7029724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Kaidan gone and Shepard's love life D.O.A., Tali and Garrus take it upon themselves to drag her through her post-Horizon slump whether she wants it or not, and maybe end up finding a little bit of love for themselves in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Commiseration Operation

The day after they rescue Tali from Haestrom, the quarian strides into the battery, places her hands on her (admittedly distracting - although he'll only ever admit it to himself, Garrus thinks) hips and says, "Shepard is sulking."  
  
His mandibles twitch as he runs through ten possible responses to that kind of statement before he finally decides on, "Yes."  
  
Tali makes a sound that may be indicative of annoyance, but it's so _automated_ that he's not quite sure.  
  
"Did you hear what I said, Garrus?" she asks, arms crossing under her ample chest that Garrus is definitely not noticing. _At all._  
  
He nods carefully. Women, he has learned, require the deft mind of a military tactician. Especially the kind of women on board the Normandy, all of of whom specialized in some kind of high-velocity weapon and could take you down before you said _hey, nice tits._  
  
Note to prospective crew: _Never_ say 'nice tits' to anyone on board the Normandy.  
  
"You said, 'Shepard is sulking'," he says, even attempting to imitate the exact tone she said it in.  
  
" _Shepard_ is _sulking,_ " she repeats, sounding more and more impatient.  
  
"So you said."  
  
"Don't you get it? Shepard is locking herself up in her cabin like some preteen quarian with a suit rupture! She's _sulking!_ This is a sign that the galaxy's about to end, even more than the reapers coming back!"  
  
"She's organic too, Tali." Mostly, anyway. He wasn't entirely clear on the whole Lazarus thing. "She's allowed to _feel things_ like the rest of us non-galactic saviors."  
  
"But this is Shepard we're talking about. She's never been this bad - not even after Virmire!"  
  
"Yeah," he says hesitantly, unsure how much Shepard would want Tali to know. "That _may_ have something to do with it."  
  
And Tali is a smart girl, and she says, "Kaidan."

Garrus remembers the way Shepard breaks, curling in on herself in the shuttle, the uncharacteristically small voice when she'd said, _'It hurts,'_ before bursting into tears. The ghost of protectiveness rushes over him again, and he fights to tamp it down under the bright fluorescents of the battery and the weight of Tali's stare.  

"...yes."  
  
"When?"  
  
"Two days before we came for you."  
  
_"Keelah."_  
  
They stand in a few beats of silence wherein Garrus decidedly does _not_ look at the slow tapping of Tali's talons against the curve of her hip before before she suddenly demands, "Well, why haven't you _done_ anything?"  
  
"Me?" he asks incredulously.  
  
He is not aware he had been appointed Shepard's counselor. Her backup, yes, her sniper extraordinaire, yes, her designated hauls-her-ass-out-of-the-line-of-fire-when-she-gets-too-cocky, _definitely_ yes. But counselor, no. He'd not even considered Shepard _needed_ a counselor. Counseling Shepard got you a rude hang-up over vidcall, or something of the more physical variety of _fuck off_ if you happened to be within arm's length proximity.  
  
"Yes, _you,_ " Tali says, and the sharp edge of her voice is both frightening and, if he's being honest (which he's not), incredibly attractive. _Spirits,_ he's missed her, and he didn't even know it. She goes on: "It's been _three days._ Haven't you even tried _talking_ to her?"  
  
"What was I supposed to say? _Don't worry, at least the Collectors didn't get him?"_  
  
Garrus is not a good motivator. Sure, he'll clean up Shepard's leftover mess as best he could with his rifle, and he likes her well enough that he'll even deign to give her some pointers (not _too_ much, because a turian's got to retain some upper hand, no matter how bad a turian he is) to do some of the work herself. But this _talking about feelings_ thing is _way_ out of his comfort zone. It's so out of his comfort zone he can't even find it through the scope of his rifle. It's out of his comfort zone _precisely_ because he can't just scope it out with his rifle and shoot it.  
  
And most importantly, Garrus acknowledges that he himself probably needs counseling after the shit storm that was Omega. This whole betrayal drama hits too close to home.  
  
Garrus loves Shepard. No, really, he does. She is, for all intents and purposes, his best and only (-living- as singularly depressing as that thought is) friend in the galaxy. He'd take a bullet (or another rocket, as the case may be) for her. But if the therapy she needs doesn't involve taking out her frustrations with as much thermal clips they can get their hands on, he's probably not the best person to oversee it.  
  
Tali disagrees.  
  
"We're her _friends,_ Garrus. We've fought Saren and Sovereign together. We stole the Normandy together. And she's always looked out for us through it all. If it wasn't for her, you'd be dead on Omega and I probably wouldn't have made it off Freedom's Progress. We owe it to her to look out for her, too."  
  
"I _know,_ okay," Garrus snaps. "And don't think I haven't tried. _Spirits,_ I tried. But, well. It was bad, Tali. What you're seeing is already an improvement. At least she's coming down to the mess for meals now."  
  
"Keelah. That bad?"  
  
"That bad."  
  
A beat.  
  
And then, "That _bosh'tet."_  
  
Garrus's mandibles twitch in agreement.  
  
"Well," Tali says. "One way or another, we're fixing this."  
  
Garrus's mandibles twitch again, although it's less from agreement and more from a healthy male suspicion of the way Tali's head tips to the side as she looks at him. He can hear her smirking as she nods to herself.  
  
"I need to plan this out," she says, already tapping away on her omni-tool as she walks away. "I'll keep you updated." And then she walks out of the battery, and Garrus tells himself that the nervousness he feels is from the dread at being roped into some obscure female plan and not from the way the purple fabric around Tali's hips swishes as she walks out the door.

  
  
\---

  
  
The _plan_ apparently involves alcohol.  
  
Scratch that, the plan consists _entirely_ of alcohol, with a quick dash of friends on the side.  
  
And Shepard is _still_ not allowed back in Chora's Den, but luckily Garrus knows a little hole-in-the-wall down in the Wards. It's mostly filled with off-duty C-Sec officers and soldiers on shore leave, and the (exorbitantly priced, in his opinion) drinks at least don't taste like krogan piss, so there's that.  
  
It's nice. Just him, Tali, Shepard, and Joker, like in the good old days.  
  
Well, there's also Grunt, but he's mostly occupied with keeping curious citizens away from the famed Commander Shepard's table. And anyway, all krogan look alike, so it's easy to pretend he's bigger and redder and perhaps a little more restrained, if not less angry.  
  
Just like in the good old days.  
  
(Of course, in the old days, Kaidan and Shepard would have their fingers linked under the table, and everyone knew about it but refrained from commenting, and this was exactly what they were trying to forget under the sweet oblivion of drunkenness, but.)  
  
It starts off well enough. Joker cracks, well, a joke, and everything runs smoothly from there to until approximately Shepard's eighth (or maybe twelfth, he's lost count sometime after five) beer.  
  
She leans on Tali's shoulder, babbling incoherently and utterly wasted. But it's the _tears_ that work Garrus into a panic. Shepard - first human Spectre, Savior of the Citadel, Commander fucking Shepard - is a hairsbreadth from bursting into tears, her nose scrunched up and her eyelashes wet as she seeks comfort in a sympathetic if not entirely lucid Tali.  
  
"He said that I betrayed the Alliance," Shepard wails into her hands as Tali smooths down her hair. "That I betrayed _him._ Fucking-- _ugh._ As if I'd just get myself spaced so I could run off to Cerberus and come back yelling, _Surprise!_ Please. My surprises are better. Y'know. More fun. And when I say _fun--"_  
  
"I do _not_ need to know the details, Commander," Joker grumbles into his drink.  
  
"In any case," Garrus interjects, "Surprises from you often involve guns. And explosions. And driving off a cliff in the Mako, like that one time in--"  
  
_"Alright,"_ Shepard interrupts. "But. Point," she says, crossing her eyes and blinking as if trying to focus. "Point is-- _point is--"_ she pauses, considering. "He's a jerk," Shepard finishes, nodding resolutely to herself.  
  
"Damn right!" Tali shouts, one fist up in the air in drunken agreement.  
  
Shepard slumps lower in the booth seat, dragging Tali down with a soft _"Oof!"_  
  
"But he's _my_ jerk," Shepard says, burying her face in her hands. "Or was. I don't know. I don't _know."_  
  
Crap.  
  
Shepard is crying.  
  
_Shepard_ _is_ _crying._  
  
_Fuck._  
  
Garrus looks around, panicking. There are tears streaming through Shepard's fingers, sobs racking through her body as Tali wraps her arms around her.  
  
"Oh, Shepard," Tali says, her electronic murmurs lost somewhere in the mess of Shepard's hair.  
  
"You know what," Joker says. "You don't need him. You're a trigger-happy, get-in-line-or-get-out-of-my-way lady Spectre who don't need no man, am I right?"  
  
"Damn right!" Tali says, just a bit too on the loud side of sober.  
  
"I just--" Shepard says. "I just need--" She sighs, a shuddering breath like sleepless nights and self-doubt distilled into sound. "I just need him to understand, that's all."  
  
"What you _need,"_ Grunt says, stomping over to the table. "Is more drinks."  
  
So he gives her that.  
  
And later, after what Garrus presumes is half of her body weight in alcohol, the great Commander Shepard is draped across Tali's lap, giggly and largely incoherent and, thankfully (he pats himself on the back for his foresight), unarmed.  
  
"What you need," Garrus drawls, his features arranged in an exasperatedly fond turian smile, "Is to get back to the Normandy."  
  
Shepard smiles back, an upside down grin from her place on Tali's legs (a corner of Garrus' tipsy mind goes, _Legs?_ but now is _really_ not the time) and she says, as plainly and as coherently as she can: "Help?"  
  
He heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Don't I always?"

  
  
\---

  
  
Shepard's riding on the back of Joker's wheelchair, pushing it off with one foot to gain speed, and behind them a very drunk quarian is riding atop the shoulders of a very hyped-up adolescent krogan charging at full speed after the humans.  
  
"Commander, watch out for that--!"  
  
_"Too late!"_  
  
Shepard speeds past the knocked-over C-Sec officer without bothering to slow down. Grunt follows suit, Tali draped over his shoulder as she looks down at the fallen turian.  
  
_"Sooooooorrrrryyyyyyy!"_ she says in her automated voice as they sweep past.  
  
Garrus comforts himself with the fact that, in case of accidents or other various untoward incidents, Shepard, at least, would be recognizable enough to be identified and sent back to the Normandy, what with her face being plastered in front of practically every store on the Citadel. The turian moves to trudge after them, long-suffering, but he spies a figure standing frozen in the shadows of a storefront, eyes wide and sad.  
  
"Made it off Horizon, I see," Garrus says without preamble, his tall figure looming over the human.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Kaidan Alenko looks apoplectic, his face sheet-pale beneath his dark mop of hair.  
  
"Shore leave," Garrus replies easily.  
  
"Shore leave," Kaidan repeats incredulously. "Shepard and her crew go on _shore leave_ now?"  
  
"Yeah, she's learned to recognize the importance of taking a break. Relaxing. Drinking. You know."  
  
"You took Shepard _drinking?"_ Kaidan looks like he's being strangled, or like he's ready to strangle someone. Garrus isn't sure. Human faces all look so similar.  
  
"Yeah. Helps her relax. Unwind. Forget certain bad memories that may have left her feeling vulnerable. You know how it is."  
  
"I-- what?"  
  
A wave of anger and _protectiveness_ crashes over Garrus, leaving him bristling, itching for a fight, and he's not quite certain what to do with it. He only knows that Shepard is hurting, and that feelings aren't his forte, but having her six? That, he can do. That's his _specialty._  
  
"Listen. Alenko. You're not stupid. I know, you do stupid things; who doesn't, right? But don't pretend you don't know how much shit you threw at Shepard on Horizon."  
  
Kaidan groans. "Not you too."  
  
Garrus' mandibles twitch in irritation. "Unless Shepard's somehow managed to rail at you when I wasn't looking, I can't imagine who else--"  
  
"Anderson, for one," Kaidan answers morosely. "Liara. I don't even know how she found out. Joker sent me an email, too."  
  
Garrus thinks this over, and then says, "Wow. Even Anderson?"  
  
"Even Anderson," Kaidan replies. "Something about unnecessary cruelty in the name of duty, or whatever. I don't really remember. It's been a bad few days."  
  
"Not just for you," Garrus growls.  
  
Kaidan groans into his hands.  
  
"Look," Kaidan begins. "I--"  
  
"Save it," Garrus cuts him off. "I'm not the one who needs to hear it."  
  
"Think she'll listen?"  
  
Garrus weighs the pros of giving Shepard some kind of peace of mind and the cons of giving her even more to worry about before he decides: "It's worth a shot."  
  
"Well, if _you_ think so," Kaidan says, a small hollow smile on his face. "I'll take it."  
  
"Only fools pass up a good shot."  
  
"And here I am, the biggest fool on this side of the galaxy." Kaidan's quiet for a moment, before he says, in a whisper, "Garrus?"  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Take care of her? Or just--" he takes a deep breath. "Make sure she makes it out of... this - _whatever this is_ \- alright."  
  
"Don't I always?"  
  
Kaidan doesn't say anything else, merely stares wistfully after where Shepard went, before setting out in the opposite direction.  
  
"Hey," Garrus calls out just before the human goes out of earshot. "I don't know much about human customs, but Joker said--" he pauses, feeling uncertain and not a little bit silly. "Just remember I have a sniper rifle."  
  
Kaidan doesn't turn, or make any acknowledgement that he's heard, but Garrus thinks his shoulders shake just a little bit, though from fear or regret or laughter he can't tell.  
  
Humans are so hard to read.

  
  
\---

  
  
Between him and a very amused Thane that meets them at the docking bay by Garrus' request, they managed to herd a drunk quarian, an about-to-crash-after-a-sugar-high krogan, a possibly traumatized pilot, and an all-but-crawling Commander Shepard into the Normandy.  
  
Joker wheels himself back to the bridge, despite that being probably the worst place to catch some shut-eye, because at least there he'll be able to get some much needed time in his sanctuary, away - _very away_ , preferably for the remainder of the mission - from drunk Shepard. The pilot waves a sloppy good night over his shoulder as the door slides shut, and Garrus shifts his focus back to the task of maneuvering the rest of the casualties up to Shepard's quarters.  
  
Grunt collapses in a heap on the floor before Garrus and Thane have even deposited Shepard in her bed. Tali walks - or more specifically, does a swaying kind of stumbling - behind them, and promptly allows herself to fall into bed next to Shepard, where they curl up into each other with these weird happy female humming noises.  
  
Thane chuckles and bids him a quiet good night as he leaves, but what Garrus hears is _good luck_ and he tries not to feel like he's been abandoned in the middle of a firefight.  
  
Tali raises her head a bit and says, coherently imperious enough to impress him, "Come _here."_  And maybe he shouldn't feel as flushed as he does, because she's _drunk_ and she's in _Shepard's_ bed and Shepard herself is _right there._ Awkwardly, he steps around Grunt's unconscious form on the floor and makes his way to the opposite side of bed, very carefully keeping Shepard and what little is left of his pride between him and the quarian who he wishes he really could think of as just _The Quarian,_ instead of what he really thinks of her, which runs along the lines of _curves_ and _distracting_ and possibly, probably, all kinds of incredibly inappropriate.  
  
He tries to fit himself into the tiny space left for him on the bed, armor, carapace, crest and all. It's a bit of a tussle to fit all of their limbs comfortably (not to mention the situation itself being _way_ out of his comfort zone), but they manage, somehow, and he finds himself curled around Shepard, his long arms proving too long and ending up somewhere in the vicinity of Tali's waist rather than Shepard's.  
  
"You guys are the _best,"_ Shepard says from within her cocoon of alien limbs and cotton sheets.  
  
"That's what friends are for," Tali replies - slurs, really, as the quarian runs her talons through Shepard's hair while her other hand pulls at Garrus' armor and brings the three of them closer in a squished pile of arms and legs and alcohol-induced giggles, with some added mortification on Garrus' part.  
  
_"Friends,"_ Shepard says, a little too loud and too drawn out to be on the right side of sober. "Yes. _Friendship._ Best thing in the galaxy, is friendship. Right up there with, with-- alcohol. And, um, new guns, and, and--" She pauses, her face scrunching up as she tries to think through the warm, pleasant haze of inebriation before finishing with: "Not being dead."  
  
And here, in this bed on a human ship, with his best friend's hair getting all up in his face and a pretty girl's talons scratching lightly on his armor, Garrus thinks: _He'll drink to that._  
  
"Damn right," Tali mumbles, syllables stolen by the alcohol and increasing drowsiness, before she perks up, eyes bright behind her mask, and says: "We should take a picture. To comme-- commr-- _not forget."_  
  
And then she whips out her omni-tool with the easy, practiced motion of someone who does it multiple times a day and often under heavy fire, sober or no. She calls up the camera application and Garrus shifts uncomfortably as the screen changes to mirror the three of them, squashed together, with Shepard's hair in disarray and Tali's hood sliding back and him just desperately trying to keep his mandibles out of anyone's tender bits of anatomy.  
  
"Smile!" Tali says, even though the camera can't possibly see hers through her mask and Garrus doesn't even _have_ _lips_ to smile with. But Shepard does - her grin a wide no man's land splitting her face, demarcating the miserable Shepard from a week ago from the giggly, red-cheeked Shepard now lying content and cared for in the embrace of friends and the welcoming softness of her bed.  
  
It feels like the best kind of victory - the kind that's won just after a particularly heavy loss, the kind that's hard-earned and real and completely worth it.

  
  
\---

  
  
Garrus wakes up a little before dawn, still curled around Shepard at an awkward angle, with Tali's fingers still warm against his wrist as she breathes slowly and softly on the other side of the bed.  
  
It takes him a moment to realize something's woken him, and he looks up to see Grunt tapping one claw lightly on the glass of Shepard's fish graveyard.

Er, aquarium.

"Shepard's not gonna like it if she finds out you messed with anything in her cabin," Garrus warns.

Grunt snorts. "She's just gonna kill 'em anyway," the young krogan points out. "Might as well make me happy in the process." He pushes away from the tank anyway, moving toward the door. "Speaking of messing with her cabin," Grunt throws over his shoulder as he exits, "You might wanna hope she doesn't keep a gun under her pillow. Or you might just not wanna be there when she wakes up." 

Through the haze of sleepiness and the first stirrings of a headache, Garrus thinks the krogan might have the right of it. He's not sure how well Shepard reacts to unplanned additional bodies in her bed in the morning, and, knowing Shepard's shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to pretty much everything, he's not that keen on finding out.  
  
Garrus handles Tali carefully, like he's afraid she'll break - which, he remembers, she probably might, being a quarian and all - and makes a gallant, if not entirely successful attempt at ignoring the way she nuzzles sleepily against him as they take the (blessedly, painfully) slow lift down to the engineering deck.  
  
He lays her gently down on the cot she's set up for herself in engineering, thanking the spirits that no one's around yet at this time of night. Morning. Whatever. _Alright,_ he thinks. _Mission accomplished._ Now all he has to do is get back to the battery and maybe calibrate for a few weeks until he remembers what it's like to not make a fool of himself over some girl, no matter how well she handles a shotgun.  
  
Except Tali still hasn't let go of him; he's stuck in a kind of limbo between kneeling and standing up, and her arms are around his neck and he can _smell_ her - sweet and alluring and calling to some long-buried predator instincts that he didn't know could be woken up outside of battle.  
  
"Tali," he tries, blood rushing to awkward parts of his anatomy as the moment lengthens, which is _terribly_ inconvenient because right now he needs most of it in his brain, if his blank thoughts are anything to go by.  
  
"Hm?" She draws out the sound, a soft lilting note in his ear, a content hum that jolts through his system.  
  
"You're going to... have to let go," he says, focusing on not getting his mandibles stuck on her hood or one of the many, many tubes on her person.  
  
( _It's good practice,_ some small, more southern-oriented part of his brain says, _so he doesn't get it stuck in_ other _places--_ )  
  
Oh, _spirits_ , this is embarrassing. Painfully so.  
  
But Tali sighs, resignation and something like disappointment in a breath he can't feel against his cheek but twangs in his chest all the same. "I know," she says.  
  
And then, unexpectedly, she pulls him closer, toppling his careful balance and forcing him to brace both arms on either side of her so he doesn't crush her.  
  
Perpetual armor seems like a terrible idea now, no matter _what_ the Hierarchy says.  
  
But. Her arms are around him, the sound of her soft breathing in his ear, and, and--  
  
_Women._ Who can understand them?  
  
"You're a good..." Tali begins, still holding on, but she tips her head to the side, thinking. Garrus pulls back a little and looks at the obstructive glass of her helmet, and perhaps he's imagining it, but he thinks he can see her eyes behind the glass, bright and focused and trained right on his.  
  
(He will remember this, later, when Palaven falls and fire engulfs Cipritine and home is just an orange spot seen from a lonely moon: the humming of the engine under the soles of his feet, her warm arms around his neck, her breath in his ear, the brightness of her eyes behind her mask.)  
  
But right now he is still, he is here and purposeful and safe, and every inch of him hangs on the next word that falls from her lips. The silence stretches on for a second, maybe a minute, a lifetime, a cycle - the Reapers might've come and gone and he would have, shamefully yet unregretfully, not noticed, before Tali says: "...friend."  
  
His mandibles click. "Oh."  
  
She lets go and he lets her, pulling back as though he's not quite sure it's the right thing to do but does it anyway.  
  
But he can hear the smile in her voice when she adds, "To Shepard."  
  
A beat, and then, confused and not a little bit hopeful: _"Oh?"_  
  
Amusement is apparent in the breathy tone of her voice, the tilt of her head, the languid drape of her arms across her stomach. "Good night, Garrus."  
  
His name on her unseen mouth is like the ghost of her fingers on his wrist, like the rush that comes right after a good shot, a high that leaves him breathless and suddenly very aware of-- _everything._ He wants to take off her mask, to see the way her mouth wraps around the syllables of his name like a loving hand on a well-worn gun.  
  
Which is-- stupid. He doesn't want to _kill_ her, and her mask, while unfortunately obstructing his view (and his fingers, _his mouth--_ ), is literally the only thing between her and a - most likely fatal - airborne infection.  
  
So instead, he stands, brushes off his hands, and says, "Good night, Tali," before walking away, heading back to the battery where he can hopefully match her level of inebriation, sleep this off, and forget this ever happened.  
  
But not before Tali reaches out and smacks a hand on his behind, _hard._  
  
He turns around, incredulous and wondering if perhaps he's already more drunk than he thought, but Tali is already turning over in her cot, a quiet breath that might have been a laugh or the soft sigh just before you fall asleep hanging in the air between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I really just wanted to see Shep being cuddled by friends after the shit storm that was Horizon. Also, Garrus/Tali is hella cute.


End file.
